Didi Menendez (Illinois, USA): Two Poems

SALTPETER

You say you are from Bellevue although I know you really came from Bedlam. The CIA confirmedthis. The squirrels ate all my papers so you can't prove me wrong. I used to share a drink with Toulouse-Lautrec but then I contracted syphilis and theysent me away to the same islandwith Napoleon Bonaparte.He was such a bugger. He used to spit when he spoke. It was very hard to get back on the horse when you need to keep wiping your eyes. Did you know my sister was ironing her skirt last time saw her? Don't tell? You have a sister too?Did you see that game last night? DiMaggio was at his best. Wouldn't you say the same? You are going to have to speak louder. I am deaf in my left ear. I went into shell shockwhile in Saigon. Van Gogh lost his ear in Viet Nam too.He was my bunk buddy.

Lets sit down a spell.

Do you play cards? There is a good game going on right now in the next room. Every Tuesday. I used to playthe stock market but lost it all in 1929. The fall was brilliant. Did you know that right before you hitthe pavement you see everything very clear so very clear and it feelslike everything will remain like this foreverand then everything goes black.

What about that cafeteria food. Be careful with the jello. They put saltpeter in it. Shh. Quiet. Quiet. You don't want anyone hearing us do you? Stick with me kid. I haven't had an erection since the crucifixion.Sometimes I scratch my balls as if they are still there.

UNTYING KNOTS

I am a specialist in triviality and untying knots.

I became a perfectionist on tying my shoes at the age of three just so I could untie them.

In eighth grade Rosa became zealous with Johnson & Johnson baby powder. She'dtake showers before being dropped off every morning at St. Peter and Paul Catholic School by the Roads in Miami, Florida 1973.

I needed to tell you the exact details of the date, time, denomination, and location because I mentioned earlier I was a specialist in triviality and untying knots.

Betty took the bus with us to school. Her hair was dyed blond because her mother owned the beauty salon off Calle Ocho. This is important to know because Betty had her hair chopped ala Ziggy Stardustwhen everyone was feathering theirs.

I forgot to mention that we are all Cuban boys and girls whose parents all left becauseof the Revolution between 1959 and 1966.Betty once said to us while Rosa was not around that Rosa was powdered up because she wanted to be white.

As these words escaped her strawberry glossed lips three nuns walked past the flag pole, three girls held their right hand to their heart, a pigeon landed on the asphalt and cooed, my father walked past the school yard carrying my lunch in a paper bag, boys turned their head to the street as a green Impala drove by, the American flag made sounds against the wind.

I looked down at my feet and pulled up my navy blue socks and noticed the laces on my blackand white oxford shoes had become untied.

How breaks to subject things thick with roomunder sleep wall forthat happened with mefeel slit and for light makes inverticals material happenno luck painting on a pictureeven you goto careful see stepalong with the rests to do just this

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Always a picture sticksstones and words crippleto work doubt outleave you saw that hang back at alwayslight another onehow chalk up hulk meantworked up and seem to move seenochre ochre ochre kernel sound stone tonespeaks and myths amusement confuse profuselychaos every potential sound out of

*

Type and ink absorbs to him cobbles they togetherhow public this typos and relatea blow such wordingtouchstones happen and set as willedtreeing but arise dowhere lit blades throughin zone a mornadhesions bodily dally sketchshone and try honeno ideas but in acting on thingsno spall but in clay says stints come together stays breatheinto it intuit

Laura Goldstein (Chicago, USA): A Creature...

A CREATURE THAT HAD LIFE IN IT BUT NO LONGER HAS LIFE IN IT

daft habits jolt into damped laps you can say “don’t worry about it” several many times and at the end of what’s this an episode fractured season realized into sub pieces we’ll then see that but the telling truth of now begs you, new friend, for some other advice

relax into civilization. money ekes out the pores: cleaning it kills it. I thought that I would write you but you’re already written. I thought that I could fight you but I’m actually smitten. i thought that I was right in the place where I’m sittin but actually I’m already off on a mission

flowers unearthed strewn in and around the empty fire time and time in time out again eventual crumble toward the end of something’s life span not visible but sensedwhy denote or demarcate an aspect that evokes questioning on grounds of differenceit was in the 80s when these questions began to solidify and then steps backwards

not as handy handled in the lap need seat tabletop new idea of starting some line, horizontal approaching goes beneath and passes on a way not moving but proceeding we are then vision or experience tricks in a way that shows both present and future though different to both be true

and go to the bottom as a creature whose life is not worth saving (robinson crusoe) about a bucket or a truck of coins could now be considered a truckload of corrected manuscriptscorrected by the finest editors, copied by the cunningest manifestors, manifested by the most brilliant businessmen working in the literary world today

I think that when you can sense that someone should just not be in your space or is bringing negative energy into your life then just cut them out of it. there’s this seminar on actually not forgiving people. it can be best to just go with your instincts, gravitate away from those people but then know that people will be moving away from you too

some previously ignored suggestion. helter directional. More about triangles that function as arrows into and outside of this poem. Boiled water that’s cooling at a rate about a seeping that is telling. And no more assumptions about what stays and what goes ok

however, upon second thoughts, I decided to take it away. Just in case (robinson crusoe again) about the money again and this time it is money, not coins. Dusk hulks out there with a new name that lingers inside an older connotation I’ll web onto a mat of cool repose in order to find some will power oh here it is just convenience

an arrodissement of the head around the deft heft of having fucked up. I’m singing out loud without realizing it. there are four people around me (I’m the fifth) looking at me though I can’t hear myself. number one: camouflaged first person narrative, number two: neon-inspired withdrawal of light and (consequently) color, number three: androgyny in hound’s tooth, number four: tired fireworks finally uninspired. five. right? only that.

like flitting wood grain finally exposed or brick by brick window and dream are almost the same word in that language like door and doubt or door and duel almost a lightning fest of forget it on your way out or go ahead and use pressure on people and see what happens

the whole embarrass yourself thing I feel is really passé I mean in terms of social rules I feel that we should learn to give each other a bit more room to fuck up and it should be ok although it’s hard I guess to remember all that you should have learned about yourself and other people when someone just pisses you off

I’m mixing purple with more red. I’m waiting on a certain few things to happen. Imagination is not patience. Go and rough up the day there will be more sticking points. Shine up by rubbing down. All the remembering or all the keep yourself on target it’s all the talk in a way that makes you seem like

And then yes the one about being unable to perform in fact in this one I quit before the day was over, gave up on them, and they were young. In fact, one of them lives across the street in the housing project. But if they won’t listen, that’s it. but by and by there is the progression, the ones, many in a row about being able to carry too much. I mean, not being able

Not relying on how it sounds in the context of what it should sound like in order to be a certain thing rather what can be there despite what it sounds like. And not so much a separation between the contexts more and more risk in terms of social rules and pissing people off or at least proposing something that would dethrone a few.

I sure do hope you catch me at my most beautifulone level is red, the other green: calibrateassimilate, estimate, mediate, all the productsI ate, to date, I shouldn’t disregard tell-talesigns but it’s too late